vein
/veɪn
/noun
1Any of the tubes forming part of the blood circulation system of the body, carrying mainly oxygen-depleted blood towards the heart. Compare with artery.This puts the full weight of your uterus on your back and on the major vein that carries blood between your lower body and heart....
- The veins around the anus drain into larger veins that carry the blood through the liver and up to the heart.
- Such a clot will move to the heart along the main vein of the body, the inferior vena cava.
1.1(In general use) a blood vessel: he felt the adrenaline course through his veins...
- In the preparation, how hard was it to figure out which blood vessels, which veins, belong to which of the twins?
- The General's veins started to pulse faster, and more violently.
- The tumor that you see here is my own blood vessels, my own veins, all swollen and tangled, engorged, and mixed together that bulge out like this.
1.2(In plants) a slender rib running through a leaf or bract, typically dividing or branching, and containing a vascular bundle.Expression was also detected in vascular tissues, leaf veins, siliques, and in pollen sacs....
- Nutrients are transported from the roots to the leaves inside the veins in the xylem.
- Most plants have leaves with veins that fork outward from a central midrib.
1.3(In insects) a hardened branching rib that forms part of the supporting framework of a wing, consisting of an extension of the tracheal system; a nervure.The periodical cicada has protruding red eyes and orange legs; adults have clear wings with orange veins....
- At an age of about 10 weeks we took a blood sample of 10 l from the brachial vein in the wing.
- The fore and hind wings were similar, with the R vein was bent back at the base in the fore-wings, less so in the hind wings.
2A fracture in rock containing a deposit of minerals or ore and typically having an extensive course underground: gold-bearing quartz veins...
- Quartz is the dominant mineral in veins in siliceous rocks, calcite in limestones, and gypsum in gypsiferous sediments.
- The order of deposition for the main vein minerals typically is dolomite, barite, and quartz.
- Quartz and sphalerite occur in vugs and veins in the chert nodules.
Synonyms
layer, lode, seam, stratum, stratification, bed, deposit, accumulation
2.1A streak or stripe of a different colour in wood, marble, cheese, etc.Blue cheese is a white cheese with blue veins and a sometimes crumbly interior....
- The floor was a stunning green marble with veins of vivid gold, dotted with massive pillars of white marble that supported a soaring dome ceiling.
- Irregular veins of white streaked across the forms, adding an almost eerie flare to the smooth stone.
Synonyms
streak, marking, mark, line, stripe, strip, band, thread, fleck, dash, flash, swathe, strand
technical stria, striation, lane
2.2A source of a specified quality: he managed to tap into the thick vein of discontent to his own advantage United have hit a rich vein of form...
- Unfortunately I didn't watch it, so that's a rich vein of source material for this blog down the drain.
- Well, I think he tapped into a vein of discontent among the American people.
- It's been argued by aficionados that within Leonard Cohen's melancholic work is a thick vein of comedy.
3 [in singular] A distinctive quality, style, or tendency: he closes his article in a somewhat humorous vein...
- In a similar vein, transparent quality testing and other compare-with-reality tests can help keep opinions grounded.
- In a similar vein one can't help thinking most people would be better off forgetting about lifestyles and getting a life.
- The ads display black and white photos of the party's Legco candidates taken from a video portraying its members in a similar vein to the fictional presidential cabinet in the TV series.
Synonyms
mood, humour, temper, temperament, disposition, frame of mind, state of mind, attitude, inclination, tendency, tenor, tone, key, spirit, character, stamp, feel, feeling, flavour, quality, atmosphere;
manner, way, style
Derivatives
veinless
- Her hair will forever be the same black she insisted on calling dark brown, and her feet will be veinless and narrow, never lengthening and flattening out with time and wear.
- Carex haydenii differs by having ladder-fibrillose proximal leaf sheaths, a densely cespitose habit, mostly veinless spotted perigynia, and pistillate spikes 1-5 cm long.
- The other characters are common to the Gryllacrididse and Proto - coleus, though the whole is distorted to form a functional elytron and the breadth of the veinless margin is exaggerated.
veinlet
- These lode deposits occur as a strata-bound series of thin veins and veinlets that carry free coarse-grained and high-grade gold.
- Some of the material contained micaceous masses of specular hematite associated with quartz, epidote, and numerous veinlets of calcite.
- The gold forms more coherent, solid veinlets or ‘leaves’ in the calcite and quartz than it does in the altered rocks.
vein-like
- In a recent issue of Jacket, Olivier Brossard rightly notes that this film ‘would have been a perfect case in point’ for Smith's notion of ‘a vein-like network in which differences coalesce, only immediately to fall asunder again’.
- Fishing the last filter from the bottom of the bucket inevitably meant that blackened, lard-infused acid would trickle down your arms leaving red, vein-like rashes from armpit to fingertips.
- Small vein-like streaks of white began to form in the sky, cackling through the lands with their broken laughter, as if they knew something that he did not.
veiny
- The night before Dad went to the hospital, as I was taking off his slippers to put him to bed, I could see the hard, veiny calves that only a month ago were powering him up high mountains in his native Northwest.
- After years of Parmesan, mozzarella and goat's cheese with everything, there is a return to things pungent and veiny in kitchens around the country.
- We're too hairy, too flabby, too veiny, un-tanned, our boobs are too small, our biceps are too undefined.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French veine, from Latin vena. The earliest senses were 'blood vessel' and 'small natural underground channel of water'.